How do you book or search for a flight on BritishAirways.com? British Airways doesn’t have the most user friendly booking system in the world and so this is a question I keep getting that has now turned into a post. If you’re an old pro or don’t care about British Airways Avios (miles), skip this post. Hopefully this will make the process painfully clear for the rest.
Let me first tell you how to book and then I’ll tell you more about finding tickets…
1) Go to BritishAirways.com and login.
2) It should take you to Executive Club (where you manage your reward points).
3) Click Spending Avios -> Then click Book flights with Avios
4) Type in flight details and click Search.
It will ask you if you want a stopover, I click “continue” and skip that part. If I make stopovers I do it manually. They might make your route longer and thus cost more Avios (miles).
Know that the British Airways search engine does not show all partners and it doesn’t even show all flights of those partners. I sometimes use Qantas to search for flights (or ExpertFlyer but that costs money). Also, BA’s website will try to route you through London every time (thus flying on BA)! It’s a pain and won’t show other flights once it gets the idea to fly through London. But it’s still easy to look for domestic flights or most international routes without problems.
Qantas is a great resource for searching for flights although you do need to create an account… but it is free.
American Airlines (AA.com) has come a long way with their website. Although it does show mostly the same major airlines of the alliance (and they do have some codeshare agreements that are different), it doesn’t try to route you through London or hide flights for no reason. But don’t get me wrong, British Airways has way more options but isn’t as user friendly.
Calling. I generally figure out my route completely before calling but there’s no harm in asking an agent as they have access to every airline’s info. Just as long as you’re okay with hanging up in the case the answer is not exactly what you want. Some people get on the phone, get a bad agent but are too shy to end the call and get stuck with a worse/more expensive ticket.
Anyways, I figured since I talk about Avios so much, might as well have a “how to find and book a flight using British Airways Avios” post to point back to. As always, include any tips if you have any!
Is there a trick to getting BA.com to not show this error when clicking on Book Flights With Avios: ‘Unfortunately our systems are not responding, so we are unable to process your request at the moment. We apologise for this inconvenience and suggest you try again later’?
I’ve tried with IE, Firefox, and Chrome, and I’ve never gotten anything but that error to show up. I even tried changing my location from USA to UK in case that was the issue.
Figured it out – while I had a BA.com login I wasn’t a full Executive Club member. Once I got an EC account number I was able to start searching.
I’m getting the same error, but I’ve got an EC member number, is there something else I need to sign up for?
Oh this is still going on tried several times to update phone numbers etc contacted BA about it and realised Bo**o*KS ALL is the real name just sent me a link to frequently asked questions what a company could not care less about us the customers i have tried both ways updating my details on booking and also via the membership both says the same system cannot do this at this time or words to those effect does not inspire confidence in this world off terror if their system is that bad it cannot except a simple phone number change